Interesting Times (32 page)

Rincewind reversed back on to the highway of reality.

“You see those armies over there?” he said.

The buffalo holder concentrated his gaze.

“Yes,” he decided.

“They’re fighting for you.”

The man did not appear moved by this. The water buffalo burped gently.

“Some want to see you enslaved and some want you to run the country, or at least to let them run the country while telling you it’s you doing it really,” said Rincewind. “There’s going to be a terrible battle. I can’t help wondering…What do
you
want?”

The buffalo holder absorbed this one for consideration, too. And it seemed to Rincewind that the slowness of the thought process wasn’t due to native stupidity, but more to do with the sheer size of the question. He could feel it spreading out so that it incorporated the soil and the grass and the sun and headed on out into the universe.

Finally the man said:

“A longer piece of string would be nice.”

“Ah. Really? Well, well. There’s a thing,” said Rincewind. “Talking to you has been an education. Goodbye.”

The man watched him go. Beside him, the buffalo relaxed some muscles and contracted others and lifted its tail and made the world, in a very small way, a better place.

Rincewind headed on towards the hill. Random as the animal tracks and occasional plank bridges were, they seemed to head right for it. If Rincewind had been thinking clearly, an activity he last remembered doing around the age of twelve, he might have wondered about that.

The trees of the lower slopes were sapient pears, and he didn’t even think about
that
. Their leaves turned to watch him as he scrambled past. What he needed now was a cave or a handy—

He paused.

“Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no. You don’t catch
me
like that. I’ll go into a handy cave and there’ll be a little door or some wise old man or something and I’ll be dragged back into events. Right. Stay out in the open, that’s the style.”

He half climbed, half walked to the rounded top of the hill, which rose above the trees like a dome. Now he was closer he could see that it wasn’t as smooth as it looked from below. Weather had worn gullies and channels in the soil, and bushes had colonized every sheltered slope.

The building on the top was, to Rincewind’s surprise, rusty. It had been made of iron—pointed iron roof, iron walls, iron doorway. There were a few old nests and some debris on the floor, but it was otherwise empty. And not a good place to hide. It’d be the first place anyone would look.

There was a cloud wall around the world now. Lightning crackled in its heart, and there was the sound of thunder—not the gentle rumble of summer thunder but the crackackack of splitting sky.

And yet the heat wrapped the plain like a blanket. The air felt thick. In a minute it was going to rain cats and food.

“Find somewhere where I won’t be noticed,” he muttered. “Keep head down. Only way. Why should I care? Other people’s problem.”

Panting in the oppressive heat, he wandered on.

Lord Hong was enraged. Those who knew him could tell, by the way he spoke more slowly and smiled continuously.

“And how do the men know the lightning dragons are
angry?
” he said. “It may be mere high spirits.”

“Not with a sky that color,” said Lord Tang. “That is not an auspicious color for a sky. It looks like a bruise. A sky like that is portentous.”

“And what, pray, do you think it portends?”

“It’s just
generally
portentous.”

“I know what’s behind this,” Lord Hong snarled. “You’re too frightened to fight seven old men, is that it?”

“The men say they’re the legendary Seven Indestructible Sages,” said Lord Fang. He tried to smile. “You know how superstitious they are…”

“What Seven Sages?” said Lord Hong. “I am extremely familiar with the history of the world and there are no legendary Seven Indestructible Sages.”

“Er…not
yet
,” said Lord Fang. “Uh. But…a day like this…Perhaps legends have to
start
somewhere…”

“They’re barbarians! Oh, gods! Seven men! Can I believe we’re afraid of seven men?”

“It feels wrong,” said Lord McSweeney. He added, quickly, “That’s what the men say.”

“You have made the proclamation about our celestial army of ghosts? All of you?”

The warlords tried to avoid his gaze.

“Er…yes,” said Lord Fang.

“That must have improved morale.”

“Uh. Not…entirely…”

“What do you mean, man?”

“Uh. Many men have deserted. Uh. They’ve been saying that foreign ghosts were bad enough, but…”

“But what?”

“They are
soldiers
, Lord Hong,” said Lord Tang sharply. “They all have people they do not want to meet. Don’t you?”

Just for a second, there was the suggestion of a twitch on Lord Hong’s cheek. It was only for a second, but those who saw it took note. Lord Hong’s renowned glaze had shown a crack.

“What would you do, Lord Tang? Let these insolent barbarians go?”

“Of course not. But…you don’t need an army against seven men. Seven ancient old men. The peasants say…they say…”

Lord Hong’s voice was slightly higher.

“Come on, man who talks to peasants. I’m sure you’re going to tell us what they say about these foolish and foolhardy old men?”

“Well, that’s it, you see. They say, if they’re so foolish and foolhardy…how did they manage to become so old?”

“Luck!”

It was the wrong word. Even Lord Hong realized it. He’d never believed in luck. He’d always taken pains, usually those of other people, to fill life with certainties. But he knew that others believed in luck. It was a foible he’d always been happy to make use of. And now it was turning and stinging him on the hand.

“There is nothing in the Art of War to tell us how five armies attack seven old men,” said Lord Tang. “Ghosts or no ghosts. And this, Lord Hong, is because no one ever thought such a thing would be done.”

“If you feel so frightened I’ll ride out against them with my mere 250,000 men,” he said.

“I am not frightened,” said Lord Tang. “I am ashamed.”

“Each man armed with two swords,” Lord Hong went on, ignoring him. “And I shall see how lucky these…sages…are. Because, my lords, I will only have to be lucky once. They will have to be lucky a quarter of a million times.”

He lowered his visor.

“How lucky do you feel, my lords?”

The other four warlords avoided one another’s gaze.

Lord Hong noticed their resigned silence.

“Very well, then,” he said. “Let the gongs be sounded and the firecrackers lit—to ensure good luck, of course.”

There were a large number of ranks in the armies of the Empire, and many of them were untranslatable. Three Pink Pig and Five White Fang were, loosely speaking, privates, and not just because they were pale, vulnerable, and inclined to curl up and hide when danger threatened.

In fact they were so private as to be downright secretive. Even the army’s mules ranked higher than them, because good mules were hard to come by whereas men like Pink Pig and White Fang are found in every army, somewhere where a latrine is in need of cleaning.

They were so insignificant that they had, privately, decided that it would be a waste of an invisible foreign blood-sucking ghost’s valuable time to attack them. They felt it only fair, after it had come all this way, to give it the chance of fiendishly killing someone superior.

They had therefore hospitably decamped just before dawn and were now hiding out. Of course, if victory threatened they could always
re
camp. It was unlikely that they’d be missed in all the excitement, and both men were somewhat expert at turning up on battlefields in time to join in the victory celebrations. They lay in the long grass, watching the armies maneuver.

From this height, it looked like an impressive war. The army on one side was so small as to be invisible. Of course, if you accepted the very strong denials of last night, it was so
invisible
as to be invisible.

It was also their elevation which meant that they were the first to notice the ring around the sky.

It was just above the thunderous wall on the horizon. Where stray shafts of sunlight hit it, it glowed golden. Elsewhere it was merely yellow. But it was continuous, and thin as a thread.

“Funny-looking cloud,” said White Fang.

“Yeah,” said Pink Pig. “So what?”

It was while they were thus engaged, and sharing a small bottle of rice wine liberated by Pink Pig from an unsuspecting comrade the previous evening, that they heard a groan.

“Oooooohhhhhh…”

Their drinks froze in their throats.

“Did you hear that?” said Pink Pig.

“You mean the—”

“Ooooohhhh…”

“That’s it!”

They turned, very slowly.

Something had pulled itself out of a gully behind them. It was humanoid, more or less. Red mud dripped from it. Strange noises issued from its mouth.

“Oooooohhhhshit!”

Pink Pig grabbed White Fang’s arm.

“It’s an invisible blood-sucking ghost!”

“But I can see it!”

Pink Pig squinted.

“It’s the Red Army! They’ve come up outa the earth like everybody says!”

White Fang, who had several brain cells more than Pink Pig, and more importantly was only on his second cup of wine, took a closer look.

“It could be just one ordinary man with mud all over him,” he suggested. He raised his voice. “Hey, you!”

The figure turned and tried to run.

Pink Pig nudged his friend.

“Is he one of ours?”

“Looking like that?”

“Let’s get him!”

“Why?”

“’Cos he’s running away!”

“Let him run.”

“Maybe he’s got money. Anyway, what’s he running away for?”

Rincewind slid down into another gully. Of all the luck! Soldiers should be where they were expected to be. What had happened to duty and honor and stuff like that?

The gully had dead grass and moss in the bottom.

He stood still and listened to the voices of the two men.

The air was stifling. It was as if the oncoming storm was pushing all the hot air in front of it, turning the plain into a pressure cooker.

And then the ground creaked, and sagged suddenly.

The faces of the absentee soldiers appeared over the edge of the gully.

There was another creak and the ground sank another inch or two. Rincewind didn’t dare breathe in, in case the extra weight of air made him too heavy. And it was very clear that the least activity, such as jumping, was going to make things worse…

Very carefully, he looked down.

The dead moss had given way. He seemed to be standing on a baulk of timber buried in the ground, but dirt pouring around it suggested that there was a hole beneath.

It was going to give way any second n—

Rincewind threw himself forward. The ground fell away underneath so that, instead of standing on a slowly breaking piece of timber, he was hanging with his arms over what felt like another concealed log and, by the feel of it, one which was as riddled with rot as the first one.

This one, possibly out of a desire to conform, began to sag.

And then jolted to a stop.

The faces of the soldiers vanished backwards as the sides of the gully began to slide. Dry earth and small stones slid past Rincewind. He could feel them rattle on his boots and drop away.

He felt, as an expert in these things, that he was over a depth. From his point of view, it was also a height.

The log began to shift again.

This left Rincewind with, as he saw it, two options. He could let go and plunge to an uncertain fate in the darkness, or he could hang on until the timber gave way, and then plunge to an uncertain fate in the darkness.

And then, to his delight, there was a third option. The toe of his boot touched something, a root, a protruding rock. It didn’t matter. It took some of his weight. It took at least enough to put him in precarious equilibrium—not exactly safe, not exactly falling. Of course, it was only a temporary measure, but Rincewind had always considered that life was no more than a series of temporary measures strung together.

A pale yellow butterfly with interesting patterns on its wings fluttered along the gully and settled on the only bit of color available, which turned out to be Rincewind’s hat.

The wood sagged slightly.

“Push off!” said Rincewind, trying not to use heavy language. “Go away!”

The butterfly flattened its wings and sunned itself.

Rincewind pursed his lips and tried to blow up his own nostrils.

Startled, the creature skittered into the air…

“Hah!” said Rincewind.

…and, in response to its instincts in the face of a threat, moved its wings like
this
and
this
.

The bushes shivered. And around the sky, the towering clouds curved into unusual patterns.

Another cloud formed. It was about the size of an angry gray balloon. And it started to rain. Not rain generally, but specifically. Specifically on about a square foot of ground which contained Rincewind; specifically, on his hat.

A very small bolt of lightning stung Rincewind on the nose.

“Ah! So we have”—Pink Pig, appearing around the curve of the gully, hesitated a bit before continuing slightly more thoughtfully—“a head in a hole…with a very small thunderstorm above it.”

And then it dawned on him that, storm or no storm, nothing was preventing him from cutting off significant parts. The only significant part available was a head, but that was fine by him.

At which point, Rincewind’s hat having absorbed enough moisture, the ancient wood gave way under the strain and plunged him to an uncertain fate in the darkness.

It was utterly dark.

There had been a painful confusion of tunnels and sliding dirt. Rincewind assumed—or the small part of him that was not sobbing with fear assumed—that the earth had caved in after him. Cave. That was a significant word. He was in a cave. Reaching out carefully, in case he felt something, he felt for something to feel.